Fishpicker
10-12-2007, 12:29 AM
from: http://www.cnbc.com/id/21257762/
Dear folks,
You guys are good. Real good. You are truly a force on World Wide Web and I tip my hat to you.
That's based on my first hand experience of your work regarding our CNBC Republican candidate debate. After the debate, we put up a poll on our Web site asking who readers thought won the debate. You guys flooded it.
Now these Internet polls are admittedly unscientific and subject to hacking. In the end, they are really just a way to engage the reader and take a quick temperature reading of your audience. Nothing more and nothing less. The cyber equivalent of asking the room for a show of hands on a certain question.
So there was our after-debate poll. The numbers grew ... 7,000-plus votes after a couple of hours ... and Ron Paul was at 75%.
Now Paul is a fine gentleman with some substantial backing and, by the way, was a dynamic presence throughout the debate , but I haven't seen him pull those kind of numbers in any "legit" poll. Our poll was either hacked or the target of a campaign. So we took the poll down.
The next day, our email basked was flooded with Ron Paul support messages. And the computer logs showed the poll had been hit with traffic from Ron Paul chat sites. I learned other Internet polls that night had been hit in similar fashion. Congratulations. You folks are obviously well-organized and feel strongly about your candidate and I can't help but admire that.
But you also ruined the purpose of the poll. It was no longer an honest "show of hands" -- it suddenly was a platform for beating the Ron Paul drum. That certainly wasn't our intention and certainly doesn't serve our readers ... at least those who aren't already in the Ron Paul camp.
Some of you Ron Paul fans take issue with my decision to take the poll down. Fine. When a well-organized and committed "few" can throw the results of a system meant to reflect the sentiments of "the many," I get a little worried. I'd take it down again.
Sincerely,
Allen Wastler
Managing Editor, CNBC.com
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how about: you just thank us for the bone we threw to you when we decided to visit your site?
this is the one thing that bothers me: "computer logs showed the poll had been hit with traffic from Ron Paul chat sites." this isn't feasible. even if people had met up on Ron Paul chat sites and then decided to flood a poll, the traffic would be distributed. Web traffic isnt anything that goes from one website to another.
if all the traffic came from a few sites, it should be easy to differentiate between the legitimate traffic from the spamtastic.
and OH, BTW, there is no such thing as flooding a public poll. if anyone and everyone is welcome to particpate, you should cater to the people that are interested in the poll. instead, MSNBC decided to throw the poll down the drain and call out the 70% of participants that voted for Paul.
CNBC is ****ing shameless. and their IT guys suck dick with a Bangladeshi accent on every slurp.
Dear folks,
You guys are good. Real good. You are truly a force on World Wide Web and I tip my hat to you.
That's based on my first hand experience of your work regarding our CNBC Republican candidate debate. After the debate, we put up a poll on our Web site asking who readers thought won the debate. You guys flooded it.
Now these Internet polls are admittedly unscientific and subject to hacking. In the end, they are really just a way to engage the reader and take a quick temperature reading of your audience. Nothing more and nothing less. The cyber equivalent of asking the room for a show of hands on a certain question.
So there was our after-debate poll. The numbers grew ... 7,000-plus votes after a couple of hours ... and Ron Paul was at 75%.
Now Paul is a fine gentleman with some substantial backing and, by the way, was a dynamic presence throughout the debate , but I haven't seen him pull those kind of numbers in any "legit" poll. Our poll was either hacked or the target of a campaign. So we took the poll down.
The next day, our email basked was flooded with Ron Paul support messages. And the computer logs showed the poll had been hit with traffic from Ron Paul chat sites. I learned other Internet polls that night had been hit in similar fashion. Congratulations. You folks are obviously well-organized and feel strongly about your candidate and I can't help but admire that.
But you also ruined the purpose of the poll. It was no longer an honest "show of hands" -- it suddenly was a platform for beating the Ron Paul drum. That certainly wasn't our intention and certainly doesn't serve our readers ... at least those who aren't already in the Ron Paul camp.
Some of you Ron Paul fans take issue with my decision to take the poll down. Fine. When a well-organized and committed "few" can throw the results of a system meant to reflect the sentiments of "the many," I get a little worried. I'd take it down again.
Sincerely,
Allen Wastler
Managing Editor, CNBC.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
how about: you just thank us for the bone we threw to you when we decided to visit your site?
this is the one thing that bothers me: "computer logs showed the poll had been hit with traffic from Ron Paul chat sites." this isn't feasible. even if people had met up on Ron Paul chat sites and then decided to flood a poll, the traffic would be distributed. Web traffic isnt anything that goes from one website to another.
if all the traffic came from a few sites, it should be easy to differentiate between the legitimate traffic from the spamtastic.
and OH, BTW, there is no such thing as flooding a public poll. if anyone and everyone is welcome to particpate, you should cater to the people that are interested in the poll. instead, MSNBC decided to throw the poll down the drain and call out the 70% of participants that voted for Paul.
CNBC is ****ing shameless. and their IT guys suck dick with a Bangladeshi accent on every slurp.